Devil's Third is finally released today, after a somewhat troublesome development you might say. I received my copy yesterday (courtesy of GameSeek) and managed to spend about 90 minutes in total on it last night equally split between single player and online modes. Quick first impressions:
Single player
The game opens with some typical plot about the bad guys exploding Russian satellites, causing an EMP to knock out power stations and cause the world to descend into chaos etc etc. Standard nonsense, but the key thing is that the enemies are known as the 'school of destruction' or SOD for short, meaning that you are often told to kill the SOD in mission objectives which is pretty amazing.
Ivan (the drum playing, bald headed, tattoo covered terrorist who you control) is pretty responsive and you are quickly able to use actions such as a Vanquish-esque slide and the ability to run up walls. Melee combat is controlled with two attack buttons which combined with evades/slides/jumps does give a few different techniques at your disposable but don't be expecting a deep combat system here. Similarly gun play is relatively basic.
The framerate does tend to fluctuate but so far it hasn't been as disastrous as some reviews made it out to be. Having said that I've just come from playing The Evil Within [Xbox One] which is hardly silky smooth so that might be clouding my judgement somewhat.
After a mission and a half the single player campaign has been pretty basic but dumb fun, which is what I was expecting if I'm being honest.
Multiplayer
Only managed a few games in the free-for-all deathmatch, each time having around 8 or so folk per round, and it was chaotic fun. The marriage of melee combat and weapon usage certainly gives it its own feel, and judging when to effectively use each seems to be the recipe for racking up kills. I only played a couple of maps but I was impressed by the verticality of each, providing lots of opportunity to reach great heights and then attack the fools below with leaping melee attacks.
Overall, early impressions are of a game that tries to do things a little differently, which I applaud, and even though the execution might not be perfect there does seem to be a lot of enjoyment to be had (especially online).
Single player
The game opens with some typical plot about the bad guys exploding Russian satellites, causing an EMP to knock out power stations and cause the world to descend into chaos etc etc. Standard nonsense, but the key thing is that the enemies are known as the 'school of destruction' or SOD for short, meaning that you are often told to kill the SOD in mission objectives which is pretty amazing.
Ivan (the drum playing, bald headed, tattoo covered terrorist who you control) is pretty responsive and you are quickly able to use actions such as a Vanquish-esque slide and the ability to run up walls. Melee combat is controlled with two attack buttons which combined with evades/slides/jumps does give a few different techniques at your disposable but don't be expecting a deep combat system here. Similarly gun play is relatively basic.
The framerate does tend to fluctuate but so far it hasn't been as disastrous as some reviews made it out to be. Having said that I've just come from playing The Evil Within [Xbox One] which is hardly silky smooth so that might be clouding my judgement somewhat.
After a mission and a half the single player campaign has been pretty basic but dumb fun, which is what I was expecting if I'm being honest.
Multiplayer
Only managed a few games in the free-for-all deathmatch, each time having around 8 or so folk per round, and it was chaotic fun. The marriage of melee combat and weapon usage certainly gives it its own feel, and judging when to effectively use each seems to be the recipe for racking up kills. I only played a couple of maps but I was impressed by the verticality of each, providing lots of opportunity to reach great heights and then attack the fools below with leaping melee attacks.
Overall, early impressions are of a game that tries to do things a little differently, which I applaud, and even though the execution might not be perfect there does seem to be a lot of enjoyment to be had (especially online).
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